Laughter a Form of Exercise
“It’s bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads your hips.” - Fred Allen
Actually laughter is a form of exercise. Noman Cousins called laughter “internal jogging” because when we laugh (good belly laughs) we exercise our muscles from our hips to our shoulders. We get bad air out of our lungs, lower our heart rate, lower our blood pressure and get oxygen in the blood system. Sounds like an aerobic exercise to me.
I am not saying for you to give up exercise for laughter, but think of it as a complement to exercise. Some experts tell us that 100 belly laughs are the equivalent to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise. If you physically can’t exercise this could be a healthy alternative.
I recently spoke to a group and afterward a gentlemen came up to me and said that he had been to see a comedian who performed for almost three hours. The gentleman laughed the entire time and had sore stomach muscles the next day. I explained to him that what he was doing was exercise and just like doing sit- ups or some other form of exercise, when you use muscles that you haven’t used for a while, they are going to be sore. So remember if you haven’t laughed very much lately it is important to start exercising your laugh muscles. Start out gradually and work your way up to a marathon of “Three Stooges movies.”